June 5, 2005, Sunrise snowstorm

Four of us met at the 65th St P&R and left Seattle at a reasonable time.  We arrived at the White River campground under cold, cloudy skys and started up the trail to Sunrise.  Shortly after leaving, it started to rain, and as we got higher turned to snow.  It was snowing quite heavily when we hit the trail junction, but the wind was light.  We walked along the trail to the ridge between First and Second Burroughs (?  the two closest to Sunrise), skinned around in the fog for a while and found our way over to a shortish snowfield (~400 vf) on the Burroughs closest to Sunrise with 3-4 inches of powder about where the cross is here.  We linked snow patches all the way back to the meadows near Sunrise camp, which were now covered in 6" of new snow, enough to (carefully) ski down the gravel trail.  It was snowing quite hard at this point, and we all arrived back at the car soaked.

I haven't been skiing at sunrise before, but there didn't look to be much snow.  The meadows are nearly completely melted out (or will be after the new snow melts again).  From what we could see through the fog, the north facing slopes down towards Berkeley Park were completely melted out.  Couldn't see anything else in the fog.

Lastly, when we arrived back in Seattle, my car was gone.  Stolen during the day between 7am and 7pm.  As of Monday afternoon it hasn't been recovered yet.  A heads up for anyone who makes it a habit to meet there in the morning.  It isn't a particularly nice car (10+ year old Ford Escort, with lots and lots of miles).  But it has faithfully gotten my friends and me to the mountains and back many, many times over the last 5 years.